Shortened Primary Season Is Pure Madness

March 3, 1996|By David Broder/WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUP

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Two weeks ago, a well-known Republican figure, who a year earlier had been considered a likely contender for the 1996 presidential nomination, called a lawyer friend in Sacramento. Observing the turmoil in the early contests and the inability of any candidate to take command, he asked, not altogether casually, when the filing deadline would come for the California primary election.

''You're too late,'' the lawyer said. The deadline was Dec. 29. California Republicans, tired of seeing their June primary rendered insignificant by decisions made in smaller states earlier in the calendar, had pushed the voting date forward to March 26 - and with it the filing deadline. It was part of a rush that has made this the most absurdly foreshortened primary process the nation has ever seen.

For 20 years, the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary were the only contests in February. This year, Alaska and Louisiana pushed ahead of them; Delaware, Arizona, and North and South Dakota jammed in just behind.

Now we are in March - which used to be a spring-training month for candidates as much as for ballplayers - and the primaries and caucuses are coming faster than bullets. Between March 2 and March 26, 26 states and Puerto Rico will have delegate contests. In fact, the only states sizable enough to influence the outcome that will not have voted by March 26 are Pennsylvania, North Carolina and New Jersey.

Any way you look at it, this is madness. The motivation for moving up in the calendar is presumably to obtain more influence for the state's voters and politicians. But the efforts are self-defeating. On Tuesday, nine states, ranging from the Rockies to the Chesapeake Bay and from the Canadian border to the Deep South, will pick delegates. In the days leading up to the primaries, voters in those states have seen some of the candidates only in a blur of airport stops or satellite television interviews - and some of the candidates not at all.

This high-speed demolition derby certainly does not serve the voters' needs. The candidates find the pace debilitating. Every 10 days or so, they may meet for an hour of debate, but, for the most part, their days are a draining routine of reciting stump speeches and going through repetitious television and radio talk-show routines.

The madly accelerated schedule makes it much more likely that Republicans will not select their best candidate and that the nation will not get its best potential president. There is no time for reflection, no chance for second thoughts, no time for late-starting candidates to enter the race.

Potential candidates, like the man who placed the phone call, were intimidated last year by the fund-raising challenge. Now, with some heavily touted contenders such as Phil Gramm and Pete Wilson forced to the sidelines, with the early-round survivors demonstrating their liabilities, and with scores of Republican voters telling interviewers they ache for a better choice, the primary calendar makes that impossible.

Unlike the Democrats, who have protected the priority of Iowa and New Hampshire in their party rules and made it difficult for other states to advance their voting dates, the Republican Party has adhered to a laissez-faire policy on primary dates. It is paying the price. The last chance to set rules for the year 2000 contest will come this summer at the Republican National Convention. It needs to establish some kind of orderly regime.

The most sensible proposal I have heard came 20 years ago from former Rep. Morris K. Udall of Arizona. He was never able to persuade his own Democratic Party to adopt it, so the Republicans are free to steal the idea.

Udall suggested a simple party rule stating that the convention would issue voting credentials only to delegates chosen on the first Tuesdays of March, April, May and June of each election year. Any state could choose any of those four dates; the likely result would be a mixture of states from various regions on each of the four dates.

In all probability, the results of the first two rounds of voting would also be mixed; candidates with few credentials would be eliminated, but several would remain. And if the field seemed weak at that point, there would be time for new entrants to come in. The four-week gap between the sets of primaries would allow voters and the press to inspect the remaining candidates with some care. The candidates might even get a chance to catch their breaths and clear their minds sufficiently to utter a few fresh thoughts.

This may not be the best of all possible systems. But what we have now has to be about the worst.